I teach a course in American Women's History and love that I can identify each event and issue that's dramatized in the video along with the lyrics. A couple favorites of mine:
The lace-shrouded women's demand for their personal rights as citizens. The costumes reflect the fact that the "man of the family" literally owned everything and everyone in the household in a legal system called coverture. Women had no right to their children, property, or even legal identity beyond their husband. The shrouded faces of the performers represents this legal invisibility of females.
The anger that the 15th Amendment did not include women led to Susan B Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton split off from the movement they had founded.
The very young man with the secret letter from Mama is, of course, the Tennessee state legislator who voted yes due to his mother's impassioned letter -- providing the final vote needed to ratify the 20th Amendment.
The elaborately dressed woman, backed by a chorus of middle aged male industrialist types, represents the anti-suffrage women, mostly elite types. who were vociferously against passage of the 20th. The male chorus represented the businessmen who knew that votes for women would result in laws that would stop their exploitation of poor women and children workers in their factories.
So much more.
= new reply since forum marked as read
